SMAC Venice hosts a considerable present about celebrated Australian modernist Harry Seidler

Alongside the work of South Korean panorama structure Jung Youngsun, the brand new San Marco Artwork Centre in Venice opened this month with an exhibition of the work of Australian modernist Harry Seidler. Making nice use of the monumental 80m-long run of first ground galleries overlooking Piazza San Marco, Migrating Modernism was conventional in the very best sense of the world, telling a narrative and presenting a life and profession, richly embellished with significant objects and visuals.

Curated by Ann Stephen from CCWM and Paolo Stracchi from the College of Sydney’s College of Structure Design and Planning, with curatorial advisor Nikolaus Hirsch, the exhibition does a lot to boost Seidler’s comparatively low world profile. Born in Vienna in 1923, Seidler’s story runs parallel to the evolution and motion of modernist artwork and structure all through the twentieth century.

Earlier than settling in his adoptive Australia, Seidler’s profession had a peripatetic starting, fleeing Nazi-ruled Vienna for the UK and Canada however interned in each international locations as an enemy alien. After starting his structure research on his launch, Seidler’s first experiences of apply noticed him working within the workplaces of 4 of the century’s most vital designers, Walter Gropius, Josef Albers, Marcel Breuer, and Oscar Niemeyer, all earlier than he had reached his mid-twenties. The influences by no means left him and all through his life he collected work by a number of the main lights of the Bauhaus.

At this level, he emigrated to Australia, lured by the promise of a fee from his mother and father. This resulted within the Rose Seidler Home (1948-50), one in every of Australia’s pre-eminent modernist buildings. Collectively together with his spouse, Penelope Seidler – who has supplied a lot of the fabric for this exhibition – Seidler went on to work the world over, combining structure with artwork and in addition demonstrating an affinity for concrete engineering, with frequent collaborations with the Italian structural engineer Pier Luigi Nervi.

Seidler’s most vital works are all displayed right here, from the 1958 Blues Level Tower in Sydney, to the Australia Sq. Tower, engineered by Nervi and one of many nation’s first true skyscrapers. Right here, as elsewhere, Seidler was in a position to combine artwork, commissioning Alexander Calder to create Crossed Blade, a monumental sculpture within the plaza. These integrations had been a vital a part of his architectural strategy, and the genesis and evolution of most of the key collaborations are displayed right here. In addition to Calder and Albers, Seidler turned to the likes of Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella, Lin Utzon and Sol LeWitt to create bespoke artworks for his buildings.

The structure itself has an natural fluidity and artistry, no matter scale. This was partly knowledgeable by Seidler’s personal engineering coaching and his work with Nervi and prefigures the digitally-driven parametricism that finally adopted. Different key works embody the Australian Embassy in Paris (1973–77), in collaboration with each Nervi and Marcel Breuer, and Sydney Aquatic Centre (2005-07). Seidler, who died in 2006, adeptly switched scales all through his profession, engaged on many non-public homes alongside towers and civic structure.

In direction of the tip of his profession, he accomplished the Wohnpark Neue Donau in Vienna, a housing complicated that served as ‘a extremely symbolic return to town that had profoundly formed his early years.’ Seidler’s home and workplace, with its spectacular view throughout Sydney Harbour, nonetheless hosts a wealthy assortment of paintings, a few of which has been lent to the exhibition by his widow Penelope.

SMAC San Marco Artwork Centre was co-founded by David Gramazio, Anna Bursaux and David Hrankovic, following the Procuratie’s substantial renovation by David Chipperfield Architects. It shares the constructing (owned by Italy’s Generali insurance coverage group) with The Dwelling of The Human Security Internet, a world social inclusion community. SMAC’s subsequent present, co-curated by Daniel Birnbaum and Jacqui Davies, can be The Quantum Impact.